Just Freedom

A Moral Compass for a Complex World

First edition.
  • 1 Want to read

My Reading Lists:

Create a new list

  • 1 Want to read

Buy this book

Last edited by MARC Bot
November 30, 2025 | History

Just Freedom

A Moral Compass for a Complex World

First edition.
  • 1 Want to read

Overview: An esteemed philosopher offers a vision for the central role of one of our most cherished-and controversial-ideas. In this rigorous distillation of his political philosophy, Philip Pettit, author of the landmark work Republicanism, champions a simple standard for our most complex political judgments, offering a challenging ideal that nevertheless holds out a real prospect for social and democratic progress. Whereas many thinkers define freedom as the absence of interference-we are left alone to do as we please-Pettit demands that in their basic life choices free persons should not even be subject to a power of interference on the part of others. This notion of freedom as non-domination offers a yardstick for gauging social and democratic progress and provides a simple, unifying standard for analyzing our most entangled political quandaries. Pettit reaffirms the ideal, already present in the Roman Republic, of a free citizenry who enjoy equal status with one another, being individually protected by a law that they together control. After sketching a fresh history of freedom, he turns to the implications of the ideal for social, democratic, and international justice. Should the state erect systems for delivering mandatory healthcare coverage to its citizens? Should voting be a citizen's only means of influencing political leaders? Are the demands of the United Nations to be heeded when they betray the sovereignty of the state? Pettit shows how these and other questions should be resolved within a civic republican perspective. Concise and elegant in its rhetoric and ultimately radical in its reimagining of our social arrangements, Just Freedom is neither a theoretical treatise nor a practical manifesto, but rather an ardent attempt to elaborate the demands of freedom and justice in our time.

Publish Date
Language
English
Pages
258

Buy this book

Previews available in: English

Edition Availability
Cover of: Gerechte Freiheit
Gerechte Freiheit: Ein moralischer Kompass für eine komplexe Welt
2017, Suhrkamp Verlag
Paperback in German - Erste Auflage, Originalausgabe
Cover of: Just Freedom
Just Freedom: A Moral Compass for a Complex World
2014, Norton & Company, Incorporated, W. W.
in English
Cover of: Just Freedom
Just Freedom: A Moral Compass for a Complex World
2014, W.W. Norton & Company
in English - First edition.
Cover of: Just Freedom
Just Freedom: A Moral Compass for a Complex World
2014, Norton & Company, Incorporated, W. W.
in English

Add another edition?

Book Details


Table of Contents

The past and present of freedom
Freedom with depth
Freedom with breadth
Freedom and justice
Freedom and democracy
Freedom and sovereignty.

Edition Notes

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Series
The Norton global ethics series

Classifications

Dewey Decimal Class
320.01/1
Library of Congress
JC585 .P435 2014, JC585

The Physical Object

Pagination
xxviii, 258 pages
Number of pages
258

Edition Identifiers

Open Library
OL27155937M
ISBN 10
0393063976
ISBN 13
9780393063974
LCCN
2013044118
OCLC/WorldCat
869880230

Work Identifiers

Work ID
OL17846268W

Links outside Open Library

Community Reviews (0)

No community reviews have been submitted for this work.

Lists

Download catalog record: RDF / JSON